Sunday, July 24, 2016

This jacket has a slightly Asian lines...that is if you can see past the wild colors! This cotton/linen blend fabric is Japanese Echino by Etsuko Furuya but it somehow does not lend an Asian accent to the jacket. In fact, I've been saying to my sewing pals I might have to join the circus when I wear this!

But they assure me that if I wear it over black (yeah, that works for me!) and wear a cute shoe with it I'll be fine.

I'm going to listen to them and wearing it to a one man show about Peggy Guggenheim next weekend.

This is a self drafted pattern from a RTW garment that my friend owns. I love the collar. And the pocket detail is not only comfortable but really adds to the unique lines of the garment. I hope you can see them because, by complete accident, I matched the pattern pretty well. I wasn't really trying very hard because I thought it would work no matter how the print fell. I didn't have a lot of choices in laying out the pattern because I only had three yards and this pattern should have taken about 3 1/4 yards...but I squeezed it out. I had about 5 square inches of fabric left!

If you look closely you can see a little dash of lilac on the upper right shoulder, that's the selvage, I had to use a little. I like it. I wanted to use more of it on the inside front facing but couldn't get it to work.

My husband asked, "How many fabrics did you use in this one?". Ha! That's the beauty of Echino, it gives you so many layout choices.

Anything with a bird on it is ok with me, despite what Portlandia did for (or to) this image!

The back neck detail is really nice, too. One side overlaps the other.

One thing I need to get better at is topstitching. I think I need to futz with the presser foot tension to get a more even stitch...and take slightly larger stitches. And I'm going to use topstitching thread next time. This jacket didn't call for it because of the craziness of the fabric.

My friend made it in denim with red topstitching which looks sharp.

I follow a lot of blogs, they really inspire me. One that I follow is Wendy Franzen's blog, West Zen Studio and was gobsmacked by her latest post. You have to see this jacket she designed and made, it's just so gorgeous! Congratulations, Wendy, what a feat!

I'm headed out to the garage to paint canvas for a new purse...stay tuned.